Embedded Files
with the Quatuor Van Kuijk at PS21 Chatham, NY
Parker Ramsay has forged a career that defies classification. Whether premiering, rediscovering, or transcribing, he dedicates himself to expanding the harp’s repertoire, bringing the instrument to conversations — and audiences — it had never before known. He has given solo performances at Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, The 92nd Street Y, the Frick Collection, the Phillips Collection, the Morgan Library, Salle Bourgie, Cal Performances, Shriver Hall, King’s College, Cambridge, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA.
A fierce advocate for new harp music, he regularly premieres pieces that explore the frontiers of his instrument’s capabilities. In May 2025, he debuted at New York City’s 92nd Street Y with a slate of works written in his name: the world premiere of Aida Shirazi’s A Dream Within a Dream for harp, voice, and live electronics; Marcos Balter’s Omolu, commissioned in 2021 by Columbia University’s Miller Theatre for their podcast series Mission: Commission; and Artun Çekem’s 2024 HARP (Haptic-Adaptive Remembrance Processor), which harnesses a custom touch-based interface to synthesize its operator’s live input in real time. In the 2024-25 season, he made debuts at Utrecht’s Gaudeamus Festival with Lucy McKnight’s when i am among the trees and in Dublin with a new evening-length harp-and-voice work by Connor Way and Iarla Ó Lionáird; and at Montreal’s Salle Bourgie with the Quatuor Van Kuijk. In 2023, Ramsay made his Paris debut with Josh Levine’s Anyway, the culmination of a yearlong residency at IRCAM. In April 2025, he chronicled his commissioning efforts in a guest essay for The New York Times.
Projects Available to Tour
The Street
The Street
The Street is a set of meditations on the fourteen stations of the cross scored for solo harp by composer Nico Muhly. Each movement is paired with plainchant, chosen to augment and in some cases provide counterpoint to the traditional narrative of Good Friday. The spark for each movement is narrated texts by Alice Goodman, which are simultaneously specific, evocative, mysterious, and poetic.
Program duration: 72 minutes
Touring Casting: 3-6 performers, additional projection design available
Projection Design: Camilla Tassi
World Premiere: March 2022
Commissioned by King’s College, Cambridge (UK)
Anyway
Anyway
Commissioned by IRCAM in 2023, this 35-minute work for harp and electronics by Josh Levine comprises an extended elegy in memory of the composer’s father, evoking and quoting similar forms by baroque composers such as Marin Marais, Johann Jakob Froberger and Sebastian Leopold Weiss, whose works make up the rest of the program.
Premiere: June 2023
with
Parker Ramsay, harp
Arnie Tanimoto, viola da gamba
João Svidzinski, electronics
Clément Marie, sound diffusion
Run time: 70 minutes
Touring cast & crew: 4 performers
Annäherung
Annäherung
Annäherung is an elusive German word that translates in English to something like "convergence" or "proximity". This concept is realized sonically, temporally, and physically in Georg Friedrich Haas’ new work for Miranda Cuckson and Parker Ramsay. The piece takes a unique approach to the tuning of the harp, creating a gorgeous harmonic language that turns the instrument into a kind of modulation machine, with the sounds spiraling farther away from, or closer to, the central pitch. The violin sometimes precisely matches the harp's tuning and at others plays its own slightly different microtonal intervals.
For much of the piece, the instruments are also often not in rhythmic synchronization, instead shifting in relation to each other with speed fluctuations and floating musical gestures. Annäherung has a spatial manifestation as well: while the harpist remains in place, the violinist walks, at specific moments indicated in the score, between different physical locations that are chosen and mapped out by the performers. All these simultaneous explorations of convergence and proximity
result in mesmerizing atmospheres and a sonic experience that's akin to
looking at a mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder.
Annäherung is paired with other works tbc for touring.
Premiere: February 2026, Kaufman Music Center, NYC
Parker Ramsay, harp
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Run time: 42 minutes (Annäherung; paired works tbc)
Touring cast: 2 performers
Josh Levine 80sTouring History
Touring History
Alice Tully Hall, the Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, The 92nd Street Y, the Frick Collection, the Phillips Collection, the Morgan Library, Salle Bourgie, Cal Performances, Shriver Hall, King’s College, Cambridge, the Spoleto Festival USA, and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, CU Boulder, Brooklyn Academy of Music
Press
Press
Review: A Harpist Merges Old And New, With Help From Friends
New York Times Critic's Pick, February 2026
Review: Mark Morris' Stations of the Cross: Simple and Stinging
Muhly's quiet score (played with otherworldly clarity by Parker Ramsay) contributes its own restrained bite.
New York Times Critic's Pick, February 2026
The Harp Needs More Modern Music. That's Easier Said Than Done
Guest Essay in The New York Times, April 2025
Is Bach Better On Harp?
Guest Essay in The New York Times, August 2020
Harpist Parker Ramsay’s knowledgeable introduction to Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane was a treat but even more so, his mesmerising and virtuosic performance.
The Strad, September 2022
Review: Parlando program impressively explores the “Sacred and Profane”
... an engaged speaker as well as a super harpit... Parker’s playing transfixed the audience with its compelling mix of delicacy and vigor.
New York Classical Review, September 2022
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